Hitherto, for the purpose of whitening the white background part of a reflective photographic material, a so-called brightening agent has been used in combination with a reflective support, such as a paper, a baryta paper or a film, a synthetic paper or a resin-coated paper containing an inorganic white pigment, for example, titanium dioxide, barium sulfate, magnesium oxide, etc. In addition, various techniques have been known to enhance the degree of whiteness by improving the brightening agent itself to be used or improving the method of dispersion of the brightening agent as well as the means of combination of this agent with particular polymers. For example, the descriptions in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,269,840 and 3,684,729, Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 7127/59, 47371/80, 22089/82, 21372/85, and 30463/76, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 126732/75, 147885/78, 134232/85, 111147/84, and 134833/80, etc. can be referred to. (The term "OPI as used herein means a "published unexamined Japanese patent application".) Especially preferred brightening agents are, for example, the compounds described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,632,701, 3,269,840, and 3,359,102, British Pat. Nos. 852,075 and 1,319,763, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 32547/81, etc. Further, a means of combining a brightening agent with silver halide grains having a particular form has also been developed, which is described, for example, in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 158436/85.
In the method of using such brightening agents, however, the brightening agent acts to brighten not only the non-image part but also the image part to thereby cause deterioration of the steadiness of the shadow part of the image formed and deterioration of the density of the image formed.
On the other hand, brightening agent-releasing type couplers are described, for example, in British Pat. No. 945,542, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 109927/77, etc. Further, fluorescent couplers which may extinguish the fluorescence by coupling reaction with the oxidation product of a color developing agent are also known. These are described, for example, in Japanese Patent Publication No. 8750/72. However, these are defective because, when they are incorporated into raw photographic materials, the sharpness of the image formed is deteriorated, as described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 34933/80.